The "We Are NC Public Health" campaign has advanced the state's public health recruitment goals, thanks to paid media strategies, and staff engagement.

Note: from April 2024 - June 2024, ASTHO was running nationwide promos for publichealthcareers.org as a whole. 

Video Production and Social Media Engagement: We completed seven, 60 second videos, featuring critical roles within NCDPH. In addition, we created seven, :30 second videos for paid advertising on social platforms and up to 30 social media graphics for posing on social media with links to active job postings.

• Autopsy Technicians
• Vital Records Specialists
• Business Functions
• Credentialed Public Health Nurses
• Environmental Health Specialists
• Disease Investigation Specialists
• Laboratory Technicians

Employee Engagement and Capacity Building: We hosted two lunch and learn sessions aimed building the capacity of staff to use LinkedIn to share job postings and highlights of their work, leverage personal networks to amplify open jobs and the campaign's reach. This effort facilitated broader engagement with the campaign and fostered a sense of ownership and pride among staff members.

Enhanced Recruitment: Anecdotal evidence suggests a correlation between the campaign's efforts, especially the LinkedIn postings, and the increased number of job applications received. The uptick in applications is a direct testament to the campaign's impact on public health recruitment in North Carolina.

But, while the campaign has mitigated recruitment challenges, it has also surfaced an opportunity for increased awareness of efforts to take to increase compensation. Feedback indicates that potential applicants may not be fully aware of how to qualify for increased pay rates. This underscores the need for targeted communication strategies to educate applicants about comprehensive compensation benefits and growth opportunities to enhance the attractiveness of public health careers and increase the applicants actually filling jobs.

This campaign continues to have incredible support across the Division with so many willing to lift up their voices in support of NC DPH - from submitting photos, to participating in videos and sharing ideas and stories.

We are also working with an agency to build a strategy for telling the stories of our work and lifting up the voices of public health; this effort will be more directly focused on the value of public health and strengthening trust, rather than job recruitment. It will also focus on strengthen skills to share a unified message about what DPH does and its impact on the state; and, research benchmarking the current sentiment around trust, awareness, and confidence in North Carolina state public health work and leadership to guide campaign development